X-Mas Gift o/t Year!

December 20, 2012

Well, a lobby card it ain’t, but I lucked out and managed to score a lobby photo from Ed Wood‘s cult classic The Bride of the Monster on eBay this week, so I finished off my X-Mas shopping with a little something for myself. From 1956, approx. 8×10″ with some slight bit of yellowing, it’s a nice start of what I hope will be a future collection of Wood memorabilia, and I’ll make sure to give it a special place on my living room wall. I’m not gonna say how much it cost, but I consider this to be the find of 2012. And unlike some of the other items on the market this came with a reasonable pricetag!

I think it’s a cruel irony that the poor filmmaker that spent a lifetime experiencing ridicule and defeat upon heartbreaking defeat – slowly sending him off on a downward spiral with alcohol – never got to experience how two years after his death in 1978 him and his work starting to gather a loyal cult following. Every piece of promotional material that was thrown away in disgust by frustrated distributors and theatre owners back in the 1950s (and according to The Hollywood Book and Poster interview in Mark Patrick Carducci‘s Saucers Over Hollywood didn’t cost more than a couple of bucks up until the 80s) are now at a feverish point where a copy of the original script will set you back at least $30. And that’s not all. How about a full set of Bride of the Monster lobby cards for almost $1,700? Or a second set for $1,800 – and those are not even in mint condition! I am so envious of a friend of mine (who’s name I won’t reveal out of respect for his privacy) that scored that very same set for the amazing bargain of just $75.

Even though my personal fave from Wood is his 1953 debut Glen or Glenda?, the Bride of the Monster is part of his infamous “trilogy” – peaking with his Plan 9 From Outer Space in 1959 – but Ed kept going up until the 70s, mainly writing and directing various porn movies (for a dose of true surrealism I can recommend his 1971 Necromania: A Tale of Weird Love starring my fave cutie troll Rene Bond.) The Bride of the Monster is easily available in numerous releases, but you can check it out on YouTube: